It was a great relief to Hertha when Dick went away. She had been
indignantly angry at his railing against the colored people, "her
people," as she had so lately called them; and, added to her anger, was
a sense of impotence, of inability properly to answer him. Sometimes she
almost believed that it was her duty to tell the whole family the story
of her life--only thus could she convince them of the virtue of the
Negro. But she shrank inexpressibly from such a revelation. To tell of
the goodness of her colored mother meant that she must also tell of the
sin of her own mother, a sin accounted so great a disgrace that it was
hidden at the cost of a white child's racial integrity. They would enjoy
the story, she had no doubt. Mrs. Pickens would love it as pure gossip
and Miss Wood would enjoy it equally, though she would cover her
pleasure with the veil of the interest of a sociologist. To talk about
herself was always repugnant to Hertha, and to speak to these new people
of her past was becoming unthinkable. The man she meant to marry should
know of it, but she pushed all thought of marriage from her life.
Dick's words, however, rankled daily, and while it was a futile pursuit,
destined in no way to help to install the Negro in his rightful place in
Mrs. Pickens' household, she spent many hours picturing the Georgia
boy's childhood and contrasting it unfavorably with her own. He had told
her something of his home, she had seen one of his mother's letters, and
she made what was in reality a fairly shrewd guess at his former
surroundings. When a little girl she had lived near a white family that
counted itself of importance, but whose standards she despised. These
people occupied a long, low house, devoid of paint or whitewash, with
broken steps from which the railing was long since absent. The rooms of
the house opened upon a porch and near the steps was a table with a
pitcher and bowl. It was the washroom of the home, and at noon
especially it was amusing to watch the men come up and with much
spluttering pour water over their faces and run their wet hands through
their hair. Ablutions were performed here day and night. The rear of the
house was ill-kept and dirty, and once, when Tom brought home a bright
piece of rug, thrown out on the dust heap, Mammy rebuked him sharply and
burned the offending rag in the stove. The men of the house had been
rough and unmannerly and the ugly, sallow women had dipped snuff and
looked like slatterns. Probably Dick's sisters (he had told her he had
two older sisters) were sallow, with straight thin hair and shrill
voices. If they did not dip snuff, they certainly chewed gum, a practice
in which Dick himself indulged. "Cheap white trash, dirty white trash,"
this would be the best word her mammy could say for such people, except
perhaps after a good meal or an uplifting sermon when she would admit
that they "hadn't had advantages."
And yet it was the memory of her colored mother and not the word of
apology from Dick or of excuse from Mrs. Pickens that brought Hertha to
the car that Monday morning. Ellen, she felt sure, would have rejoiced
at her retort, thrilling with pleasure at it, but Mammy would have been
grieved. "Don' make yoursel' cheap, chile," she had once said in rebuke
to Ellen, after her daughter had broken out in fierce and angry attack
upon a stupid father whom she could not persuade to do his duty by his
children. "Keep you' temper. Bad manners carry you back on you' path."
Hertha knew that she had not kept her temper, and in recognition of the
training from a gentle teacher reared in a school whose doors have long
since closed, she made her gesture of apology. But her resentment
against the "cheap cracker" was slow in dying out, and she rejoiced as
she moved about the house that he was absent from it.
She and Bob became greater friends than ever and took many walks in the
park, watching with happy interest the change from spring to full
summer. On a Friday afternoon of the week that Dick had left she went to
the great department store in New York where she loved to make her few
purchases to buy a top for Bob, partly on Bob's account, partly because
she herself enjoyed the outing. It was late in the season for tops, but
in the interminable story that meandered on through the pleasant paths
they traversed in the park Tom-of-the-Woods was spinning his top and Bob
wanted a new one of his own. So, in no hurry over her purchase,
lingering to look at the lovely silks and satins in the great rotunda,
Hertha at last found herself in the basement and, appealing to a floor
walker, was directed to the fifth floor where tops were to be found
among the toys. She pushed her way into the elevator and, standing well
in the rear, waited while the other customers got out one by one until,
left alone, the boy at the wheel called out "Fifth floo', upholstery,
curtains, toys."
When she was new to the city she had looked curiously at the dark faces
of the men who ran the elevators, thinking that some time she might see
one that she knew. But this had never happened and she had ceased to
expect it. There was no mistaking, however, the pleasant drawling voice,
the long drawn out "toy-ese" that came from the man at the wheel.
Impetuously moving forward and grasping his arm before he had time to
open the door she drew him around to her and cried out "Tom!"
"Yes'm," he answered, looking at her with a serious smile.
He had changed, but for the better, she saw that in a flash. His mouth
was more firmly set, about his eyes was a more determined look. He was
still a boy, but was fast gaining the outlook upon the world of a man.
"Tom!" Hertha cried again, "what are you doing here?"
She held his arm in hers. "Let go, Hertha," he said in a tone of
command, "I must open the door."
She loosed her hold and he drew the door open, but no one entered and
they shot on up again.
"How far do you go?" she asked.
"To the eighth."
"Well, stop here!" They were still alone, moving on above the sixth
floor. "Stop here, Tom, between these floors, please, please!"
Her voice was full of emotion and he turned his wheel and stopped at her
bidding. He had seen her when she entered and his surprise was not great
like hers. That she was a beautiful young woman, taking her place in the
white world, was what he had expected. He felt pride in her pretty dress
and graceful carriage; but he recognized her aloofness, her position
with the dominant race. Now, however, as she grasped his arm and greeted
him with the old, bright, comradely look, for a moment he felt himself
her boy again.
"Why aren't you at school?" she demanded.
He was recalled to his position by repeated clicks of his indicator.
"You know, Sister," the name slipped out unawares, "I can't explain a
thing like that between two floo's with the bells ringing for me above
and below."
"Then come and explain it to me to-night. You must, Tom. I'll do
something desperate if you don't come."
Her face was aglow with excitement, her eyes shone and she gripped her
silk-gloved hands together.
Doubtful whether he should obey her, he still could not resist her
pleading. "All right, I'll come," he promised and sprang the car upward.
They had another moment alone when she slipped her address in his hand
and described rapidly the way to reach her home. "Now I know you never
broke your word," she whispered as she stepped back in the basement
again.
Fearing that the slight delay she had caused in the running time of the
elevator might arouse some criticism, she summoned all her courage, drew
herself up with a more impressive air than she had ever yet assumed, and
addressed the starter.
"I was glad to recognize that elevator boy of yours," she said with
condescension, "he comes from my home town."
"Yes, Madam," the man answered.
"He is thoroughly trustworthy," she went on, "I know, for he has worked
in my family."
"I thought he was a good boy," the man said, bowing to her, "but we are
always grateful for further references."
Hertha nodded and made her way out.
It was not until she was almost at her doorstep that she remembered that
she had failed to buy the top.
"I'm glad I didn't tell Bob I was getting it for him," she thought
remorsefully, "but how should I remember it when I met Tom-of-the-Woods
himself!"
During dinner, Mrs. Pickens, as she looked at Hertha from time to time,
sitting silently in her place, thought she had never seemed so lovely.
Too often of late she had been worried and tired; to-night her face
expressed a glad content, her pale cheeks were pink with color, and
every now and then a look of expectancy came into her eyes. Something
had happened, of this her landlady felt sure, and she regretted that she
was going out and could not properly interrogate her pretty boarder.
We love to speak of the maternal instinct, counting it an attribute of
every mother who looks down upon her new-born child; yet in the eyes of
many women the madonna look never comes however many children they bring
into the world. But Hertha was of no such stock. Her mother had turned
toward Death when the gift that she had brought into the world might no
longer rest in the hollow of her arm. To her daughter, life glowed
purest when looking into the eyes of a child. And in the care and
companionship of the first baby that she had carried--a squirming lump
in its little white frock, its brown feet kicking futilely against her
body, its brown head resting upon her shoulder--she had begun to be
about her motherly business. It was the madonna look that Mrs. Pickens
saw in Hertha's eyes, the look of pride that her baby was growing up as
he should, and of intense anticipation at the talk that she would have
with him again.
But when the dinner was over, when Mrs. Pickens had gone out and the
others had retired to their rooms, a worried expression came into
Hertha's face. She was in the North where color prejudice was not
extreme, but she was also in a southern home and she could not decide in
what spot to meet her visitor. As she sat in her room she half laughed,
half cried over it. Probably in all the house there was no one who, if
she explained the situation, would not be glad to have her receive a
visit from a boy who had lived in her home town and who could bring her
news of her old friends there--such old friends--whether he were black
or white. And yet in the whole house there did not seem to be a proper
spot in which to receive him. From the kitchen, presided over by a cross
and busy white cook, to her bedroom, where only if he were a servant he
might enter, he had no rightful place. And in the street or the
park--she gasped at the thought of what others would think. There really
seemed no possible number of appropriate square feet, except perhaps in
the hall.
Eight o'clock found her in the parlor, the lamp sending a circle of
light from the round table in the middle of the room, the last glow of
twilight entering through the long windows. Hertha sat at one of them
watching the passers-by, eager and anxious, her heart swelling with love
for her old home and for the people there for whom she was hungry,
hungry as a baby is hungry for its mother's breast. The rooms of the
cabin, empty in her dream, were all inhabited now, the door wide open,
Mammy moving about washing the dishes, Ellen at work setting up sums for
her children at school. Outside the chickens were pecking amid the white
sand. The chords of memory were ringing louder and louder, ringing with
an intensity that came from their long suppression, calling up pictures
of the past, striking now a note of happiness, more often a deeper one
of pain. The life of the last nine months was disappearing, drifting
into a mist of nothingness, and Hertha Williams was sitting in Mrs.
Pickens' boarding-house parlor, watching for a substantial earthly
presence out of the life of the past.
"Miss Ogilvie," a voice said from the hallway, "there's a colored boy
downstairs who says he's got something for you. He says he's Tom."
"Tom!" said Hertha with a start. Her surprise was no dissimulation. She
had surely expected to see him before he entered the house and she could
scarcely believe he was really in it. "Why, yes," she stammered, "if
it's Tom he's from my old home. Tell him to come up here."
"Tom," the cook called as she went down the stairway, "the young lady
says you're to come along." And with this invitation she went back to
her work.
Hertha, as she stood there in the parlor, her hands on her boy's
shoulders, looking into his face, his good face with its serious
forehead, its kindly mouth, believed that even Dick, were he there, must
cease his nasty screeching about niggers and see that boys were boys,
black or white, and that here was a young American of whom to be proud.
"Oh, Tom," she said as she sat down, and looked at him where he stood in
front of her, "You're so good to see!" And again, "Oh, Tom, it's so
good, so good to see you!"
"Now you've got to take that chair and tell me every bit of news," she
announced when she had stared her fill.
"Reckon that would take quite a space," he answered cheerfully.
"Sit down," Hertha commanded but with a quaver in her voice.
"Oh, I couldn't sit down," Tom answered in an argumentative way. "I's
clean forgotten how. I stand so long in the corner of the car, with one
hand on the wheel like this," imitating his position in the elevator,
"and one arm going out like this," opening and shutting an imaginary
door, "that I reckon I'll soon be doing it in my sleep. It ain't natural
for an elevator boy to sit."
Hertha's mouth drooped, and yet her heart glowed at her boy's
thoughtfulness. From his entrance at the basement door until he left she
knew he would look after her and see that she suffered nothing from his
presence in her white home.
"Tell me first if they're all well?" she asked.
"Yes'm, they're doing nicely. Mammy's been ailing some this winter,
Ellen says, but she's a heap better now."
"What's been the matter?" Hertha questioned sharply.
"Oh, just ailing," Tom said vaguely. "There ain't anything rightly the
matter."
"But she's better now?"
"Oh, yes, and Ellen's had a good year at school and the hens are laying.
Mammy told about the eggs they had for Sunday breakfast."
"Truly?" Hertha said. "What Sunday?"
"Last Sunday," Tom answered and drew a letter from Ellen out of his
pocket.
As he read her all the homely news of the school and cabin her eyes
filled with tears though she did not let them fall; only when he was
done she asked for the letter and received it.
"And now," she demanded, turning on Tom with a show of severity, "what
are you doing in New York? Don't you know you ought to be in school?"
"Yes'm," he answered, shifting his weight from one foot to the other and
smiling ingratiatingly.
"What's happened?" Hertha's voice changed from one of severity to one of
curiosity.
"Well," Tom made answer, "it weren't such a great show there, so I up
and left."
"I didn't suppose you'd do such a thing! What was the matter anyway?"
"They was always rushing a feller. They didn't give yer any time to
think."
"Tom!" Hertha broke into laughter, such peals of laughter that the cook,
back in the kitchen, listened and smiled as she wrung out her dishcloth,
glad that her favorite in the house, who never made a mite of trouble,
was having a good time.
"It weren't a bad place," Tom went on, indulgent to the school, not
wishing to do it an injustice, "there's some as likes to jump about like
a chicken with its head cut off, but I like a chance to think. You'd
have found it right pretty, Hertha--a river not so big as ours but full
of lights at sunset. The trees were fine, too, with bigger leaves than
we have, and when winter come it was white with snow."
"Oh, I know about that," Hertha interrupted. "I was out in the first
snowstorm this winter, and on a sled, too. Did you go coasting, Tom?"
"No, ma'am!" His negative was emphatic. It precluded the possibility
that even, for a moment, he had indulged in such a pastime. And after
the spoken word he shook his head some seconds in further denial.
"It were this-a-way," he went on, "they thought as there weren't a
minute of the day that a feller could have to himself. I reckon they do
that way in the army, an' we wore army clothes--play clothes though, for
we didn't have no guns. You'd get up in the morning after a cat-nap, an'
go about your tasks till breakfast, and when you'd eaten that up an'
more too, there'd be drill and lessons and Lord knows what all, I can't
remember such a long while as this. But by and by there'd come a minute
when the bell didn't ring and a fellow would think he could stop to
study something. Perhaps he'd sit on a bench and try to figure out what
was in his mind when an officer'd come along and call out, 'What you
doing?'"
"And I know what you'd say," Hertha cried, interrupting him. "You'd say,
'I was thinking----'" imitating his drawl.
"Yes'm. And then he'd say, 'Get up, man, and go to work. This ain't no
place to think.'
"Well, it was like that all day. I went into chapel, a mighty fine
building, you could put most of the cabins at home in it without
crowding, and I sat down there alone on the back seat, jes' studying the
world here an' the world ter come. I hadn't been there a minute when the
Captain comes up and says sharp-like, 'What you doin' here?' 'Jes'
thinkin',' I says. 'Can't have that,' he says, 'this ain't no place to
think. Go to work!' I walks down under the trees at sunset an' watches
the pink turn into soft purple, studying ter find the first star, when
some one comes along and calls out, 'Get up, man! Don't sit still like
that. Go to work!' At night, when every one's in bed, I thought they'd
let up, so I looked out the window. The moon was sailing past the stars,
you know, and I was studying it out the way we used ter, and thinking,
thinking--But, Lord, 'What you up at this time of night for, boy? 'the
officer asks, tapping me on the arm. 'Jes' thinkin',' I answers. 'You
can't do that here,' says he, 'no time for thinking. Go to bed!' So then
I studies how to come to New York and after a while I gets here."
Tom finished his recital and smiled down at his listener.
"But Tom," Hertha asked, "wasn't Ellen terribly disappointed?"
"She's reconciled," he said dryly.
Hertha thought of Ellen and the wreckage of her plans, and surmised that
there must have been a stormy period before reconciliation.
"It seems strange, Tom," she said at length, "that you should be here in
New York alone."
"I ain't alone," he replied, "not exactly alone. I's boarding with a
lady from the South."
"Why, that's just the way it is with me," Hertha said. "Isn't that odd!"
"Do you get enough to eat?" Tom asked.
"Plenty. Don't you?"
"Oh, I suppose so," the boy said tolerantly. "It stand ter reason city
folks can't feed you like they do at home. When you have to put down a
nickel or a dime for every mite o' food you buy, for every pinch o' corn
meal, and every orange, it comes hard to set much on the table. And if a
feller goes out to one o' these restaurants to feed, why before he's
reached the pie, if he don't look out, he's eat up his day's wages."
"Eaten, Tom."
"Yes'm, eaten."
"I do hope you aren't going to be careless in the way you talk, Tom. I
hope you haven't learned a lot of new slang."
"Yes'm."
"You look well, anyway!" Hertha said, surveying him carefully.
She was pleased not only at his good health, but at the way he dressed,
the evident care he had taken to be neat and cleanly. Her pride in him
grew for she could see that he had improved as he had taken on
responsibility. Evidently it had thus far worked well for him to break
loose from his women folk and school and to shift for himself.
"What you doing, Hertha?" Tom questioned.
She told him a little of her life, her pleasant room upstairs, her work
at stenography. But she preferred to listen, and before long he was
again the chief talker, retailing every bit of news, no matter how
trivial, that had come in the letters from home. Her eagerness was so
evident, and her happiness in seeing him so apparent, that Tom wondered
to himself why she had never given them the chance to communicate with
her during the months she had been away. As though she sensed his
question she said, hesitating, the blood rushing to her cheeks:
"You mustn't think I didn't want to hear from everybody; I did so much.
And I sent them cards at Christmas that I was well. Were you at school
then?"
For answer he drew from his pocket her gift, and spun the top a moment
on his sleeve when it fell to the floor. Hertha picked it up as she had
picked up so many of his toys and put it in his brown hand where it
descended to his pocket again. She was standing now, looking into his
face. "Mammy told me," she said, "not to try to live in two worlds, not
until I was sure fixed in the new one and," shaking her head, "it takes
a long time to get fixed. But that wasn't the only reason. If I'd
written and they'd answered--it's such a little place, sometimes not
half-a-dozen letters in the post office--why, every one in Merryvale
would have known where I was."
She hesitated, blushing, but she had said enough. The look of anger on
the boy's face recalled suddenly to her remembrance the Sunday that they
had stopped on the porch of the great house and Lee Merryvale had tried
to send Tom home alone. Did he guess the shame of the weeks after his
departure, weeks that all her pride had not been able wholly to push
from her memory? She shrank at his rough answer.
"You're right," he said. "I's glad you won't have nothing to do with
that skunk."
There was a rush of feet on the kitchen stairs, and Bob surprised them
both by plunging into the room.
"What are you doing up so late?" Hertha demanded, but Bob did not hear
her.
"Miss Ogilvie," he said, all excitement, "the cook told me that Tom is
here."
"Yes," Hertha answered, and then with a gesture of introduction,
dropping into the phraseology of home said, "Bob, meet Tom."
The little boy showed a moment's surprise, then accepting the race of
his hero, Tom-of-the-Woods, as a simple fact, asked eagerly, "Did you
bring your top?"
Tom, surprised at this greeting, brought out the top again.
"Come along," Bob cried, and leading the way they all three went out of
the house down the stoop.
"You must do awfully well," Hertha whispered as under the street lamp
the hero of her story began slowly to wind his string.
"What you been giving him?" he asked, nodding to the little boy whose
gleaming blue eyes and intense interest in the proceedings augured more
than the mere pleasure in seeing a top spin.
"I've just been telling him a few things," she answered lightly.
She stood on the steps and watched with delight Tom's careful choice of
the best spot on the pavement for his spin and smiled to see the two
boy-faces, one so pink and white, the other so brown, each intent on the
business in hand.
It was a queer trick. Despite the many times Hertha had seen it, she was
never quite sure at what moment the top, spinning at a marvelous pace,
was caught up by the spinner to disappear in his pocket. And if she felt
the illusion, despite her familiarity with it, there was no question but
that Bob in the dim light, looking for the miraculous, found it. He
regarded Tom as a magician and only hoped for some new manifestation of
his power when he straightened himself up and stood before them.
"I must go now," he said.
He looked up at Hertha who stood on the step above him.
"Tom," she said, trying to delay him, "do you go to church?"
"Of course!"
"To Siloam?"
"How'd you guess that?"
"It's the biggest church in town."
Tom smiled. "I reckon you know'd I wouldn't go to any but a big one
while I was about it."
"And when you write home tell them all about me, won't you?"
"Yes."
"And we won't lose track of one another again."
He did not reply to this, but with a smile for her and a nod to Bob,
walked with his slow, steady gait down the street. Hertha stood by her
doorstep fearing to go farther, but Bob tore after his hero and with
short, trotting steps that sometimes became a run, accompanied him to
the street car, watching as he was carried away out of his sight.
When he came back he found Hertha standing just where he had left her.
"Say, Miss Ogilvie," he questioned, "is it staying in the woods so much
makes him black?"
"Why do you ask!" Hertha said sharply; "don't you like him the way he
is?"
"Oh, I don't care," Bob replied in a catholic spirit; and added
meditatively: "In the Arabian Nights all the genii are black."